Good news for people seeking multiple green building certification. The US Green Building Council (USGBC) is now aligning itself with the Living Building Challenge (LBC).
Water and Energy efficiency are two of the seven “petals’ on which building performance is rated. The others are Place, Health & Happiness, Materials, Equity and Beauty.
Specifically, LEED now recognizes LBC-certified projects for their energy and water efficiency credits. USGBC has noted that LBC’s Water and Energy “Petals”—the equivalent of LEED’s credit categories—fully correspond and satisfy the requirements of LEED’s own water and energy categories.
For this recognition, the LBC-certified project earns all LEED prerequisites and most LEED credits in those categories. More importantly, extra documentation and paperwork are no longer needed.
It should be noted though that LEED and LBC differ in their timeframes of certification. LBC typically requires a full year to assess building performance.
Says Scot Horst, USGBC’s chief product officer, “USGBC and the International Living Future Institute [ILFI], developers of the Living Building Challenge, share a common commitment and goal to transform the way we design, build, and operate our buildings.”
Several other alignments are in the works. ILFI’s Declare label for example is seeking recognition under LEED v4’s Material and Resources. Meanwhile, the framework for its Just label was recently used to develop a LEED pilot credit on social equity. Just goes to show how green building ratings can complement each other for a better built world.
